You Are Here: A Memoir of Arrival

Wesley Gibson is an extraordinarily fine writer. YOUR ARE HERE: A Memoir of Arrival is that rare breed of book that combines autobiographical information filtered through a storyteller's gift of fiction that enhances the presence of the written word. And Gibson is such a finely tuned wordsmith that he is able to, within the space of one page, make the reader howl with laughter and then feel the internalized, longstanding turmoil that makes his characters so vital.Raised in the South (Richmond, Virginia) with all of its odd family values, social codes, religiosity, and homophobia, Gibson concentrates his memoir on his transplantation to New York City,the "HERE" of the title. Quite different from the end-of-the-rainbow aura that Gotham has for most writers and readers and artists and dreamers and, well, all of us, Gibson peels the layers off the city that never sleeps, letting us know just how difficult it is to exist there. His many jobs, his apartment hunting through the gay roommating service, his over the edge hypochondria, his work as a telemarketer, his endless attempts to be the writer he knows he can be... all of these themes are populated with curious people (few characters drawn in contemporary fiction are as hilarious-yet tragic as the morbidly obese Mr. McNally he has to rescue from the toilet seat). Curious, and yet tragic also: John his male nurse roommate whose horrendous cough ultimately is diagnosed as lung cancer, his other roommate Alan who is seen only briefly between the sounds of tricks, joyful Jo Ann his dearest friend, his own PWA dates from whom he attracts scabies, and the rest of the co-players in this novel. Gibson peppers his memoir with many insights on being a gay man."To be gay is to live, with a certain hesitancy, however slight, out there in the world. Even when it only flickers through you, you can't help wondering how the day thing is going to play itself out with your sister's new husband, in that class you're teaching, at some stupid party. It's born from the understanding that the simple act of walking down the street could be enough to instigate the day of your death. etc" "I'd never been much of a theater queen, but I had my own longings of a literary kind, and as far as I knew, no amusing caricatures of me had ever appeared in the New York Review of Books, my Broadway. That was the problem with bars. Everyone's dreams seem to leak and get all over the floor." "In the mirror , I was still recognizably human; but the icy and amphibious blood of a New Yorker trying to survive was beginning to course through my veins." And "It seemed like a fitting inheritance for a world where friends were family, and family were strangers, and you might find yourself helping someone else to die because you'd been yoked to them by accidents of commerce and the mysterious trick of your own sexual nature and some fumbling attempt at compassion."As usual, excerpts chosen from an excellent novel serve as the best cr

Just finished this book and man this guy gets it dead on.This book is for everyone who wonders what it's like to live in New York trying to be a writer when there ain't no time for writing what with all the hours slaving for tips at the restaurant and all the TV shows that have to be watched while you lounge on the couch talkin on the phone and all the cigarettes and all the sittin in coffeeshops and takin care of your cancer ridden roommate. Who has time to write? Time's running out and you're getting too old to be the enfant terrible of the literary world. I love his honesty about not feeling hot enough to really be gay and also how the restaurant days really aren't that bad. This is a book about the chase and admitting that's usually the best part. If only you knew it at the time. I hope he's working on a novel.

For many young gay men who live in disparate communities around the country, New York City is the golden promise land that they strive to merge into once age and finances allow. The tale of an obscure individual arriving in the city with nothing and achieving fame beyond his wildest dreams has become an American myth. Wesley Gibson has written his own tale of travelling to the famous city where he hopes to establish himself as a writer. He lives under the threat that if he doesn't make it he will have to return to his hometown as a failure.He casts the physical landscape of the city under the terms of a gay sensibility. For instance, he remarks: "Central Park is Martha, as in George and Martha, braying at you, `I do not bray.' It's too much of muchness." In this redefinition of the city he marks it as his own territory. It's also a clever way for the author to introduce his environment as a character itself. While the tone of the book remains that of a memoir, the people Gibson encounters are transformed into eccentric characters that stand alongside the colourful caricatures of Dickens' fictional world. In fact by the end he remarks that he feels a growing kinship to one of Dickens' greatest tragic females. This fictional cast to his life is borne out of a self-consciousness playfulness that comes through in his thought process, usually spurred on by morbid premonitions of doom. After hardly speaking to his new roommate he is on the phone to a close friend fearing that he's moved in with an axe murderer. Dramatic events are conceived in his mind and then the reality of the city asserts itself as stranger than anything this writer could have imagined.Gibson describes the typical life of a writer, where little actual writing is accomplished, and a mass of experience is acquired. To make ends meet he tries different jobs and finds a room through a gay housing agency. These lead to hilarious encounters which highlight the absurdities of life like in the best writing of David Sedaris. However, much of the book is also concerned with the serious problems Gibson encounters such as depression, AIDS and isolation. He finds that having abandoned the threatening homophobic environment of his home in Virginia, the liberal big city does little to comfort this gay man. His first potential romantic encounter turns out to be a hustler looking for money and a place to crash for the night. A potential roommate with a large collection of extremely anatomically correct GI Joe figures proclaims that Gibson isn't a normal gay man. This lingering resentment of being outcast for not conforming to a certain image of a gay man haunts the memoir. It leads me to believe that Gibson has a much bigger fictional work ahead of him.Nevertheless, YOU ARE HERE remains a funny, thoughtful account that many people will no doubt identify with for it's witty observations of cosmopolitan life.

Do yourself a favor and pick up this book. Funny, touching , and moving all at the same time. The book is a great read by an author that I feel is going to be well known very soon.

I happened on this book and boy am I glad I did. This book is witty and just beautiful. This book is very clever and some of the insights into life are exhilirating.